Well, I'm not very happy with how the race turned out, but there's not really anyone to blame but myself and PD.
The race started well. Moleman pulled away to an early lead, and it looked for a bit like he might be running away with the race. But as his tyres wore down his lead stopped at about 7 seconds and I began to reel him in. When he pitted on lap 15 I was right up his chuff, and I was forced to consider my pitting strategy. I decided that the since I was keeping up with him the safe mood was just to mirror his pit stops and either wait for an accident on his part or try and take him on the final laps, where I should have the tyre advantage.
I pitted on lap 16, and came out just behind Moleman. And both of us were stuck behind Atlas and Kamykaze.
First rant at PD here: if their player listing on the side of the screen gave you splits to all the other players like every other game does, I could have seen that Moleman had gotten caught behind Atlas and Kamy and aborted the pit. Instead I assumed that they were reasonably close behind us, and that Moleman and I would have room to maneuver after the pit. Wrong.
Anyway, Moleman pulled off a spectacular passing move around the outside and started streaking off into the distance. Atlas and Kamy were fighting each other hard, and I didn't really want to break it up for them. Since I was on fresh tyres, I was hoping that they'd realise it was ultimately a lost cause trying to fight me and let me go chase after Moleman.
Unfortunately not. After a lap behind them it was pretty clear that I wasn't going to get any concessions. The horrible thing is that the Celica is quicker through the corners, but slower in a straight line than the Garaiya. Altas led in the Celica, doing a good job of running smoothly. Kamy was chasing him down, but because both Kamy and I had the draft and he had a faster car I couldn't get him on the straights. And didn't want to divebomb him in case he didn't see it coming and made a move of his own on Atlas at the same time.
I figured about the only thing I could do was stick on the back of him and try and wait for a mistake. I was on fresh tyres, so it would be easy and safe for me to keep close to the tail happy Garaiya, and hopefully I'd be in position to nip past if he clipped a wall.
However, as with all things, the universe decided it was not to be. On lap 18 a lag spike struck and threw Kamy's car back into mine. He never saw a thing on his screen, and it's no fault of his. But my car had severe engine and suspension damage. Two laps into my fresh set of tyres I was forced to pit for damage.
I was pretty pissed off at this point. I was frustrated that Atlas and Kamy had held me up (as is their right, but mid-race you rarely think rationally about these things), and that I'd gotten smashed by a stupid lag spike. I came out behind Scanny_Flick, but in my preoccupation with feeling sorry for myself I forgot that I was on cold tyres again and spun it at the first corner by using too much gas.
Major engine damage again, on lap 20.
One slow lap and one more pit stop later, and I was dead last. A few deep breaths as I drove round helped, and there's something about being last that's calming. Everything is up, and obviously catching the frontrunners was completely out of the question for me. It was simply a matter of trying to finish the race and claw back as many points as possible.
The rest of the race was pretty unexciting. I didn't drive particularly fast, because I'd lost pretty much all confidence in myself and the car. I took one more stop about lap 32, and just managed to get past Hortus in the last few laps to take 5th.
Not a terrible result for a race that involved 4 pit stops, but frustrating nonetheless. It's tough not to try and second guess some of the decisions during the race. I think the call to pit with Moleman was correct given the information I had, even though in hindsight I might have avoided a lot of trouble by running longer. Tailgating Kamy was a probably a mistake, given that I know that GT5 has serious issues with it's netcode. I knew I was opening myself up to lag by being that close to him, but I was so captivated by the thought of catching Moleman that I dismissed it. The correct choice was probably to hang back a bit, wait for a mistake to get past Kamy and Atlas and focus on finishing in second.
Sorry for the wall of text, hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes and avoid having a demoralising race like that.
) - thought Neo was doing a 1-stopper so coming out of the pits behind you two was the worst thing for me - till he came out behind you guys too, woo.
the hell out of me.
. It is painfully obvious that PD still hasn't figured out online play. Unreal Tournament had far superior online play back in 1999. That said, I lucked out and wasn't affected by lag in this race.
